


Estelio Han, Estelio Veleth

by heartstone



Series: The One That Needed It Most [3]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dialogue Heavy, M/M, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:48:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29761944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartstone/pseuds/heartstone
Summary: “You could destroy me utterly, Tyelpë,” he wavers through the connection of their bright Fëar. “And I am scared that I will let you, and I am scared that I will try to destroy you first.”***
Relationships: Annatar/Celebrimbor | Telperinquar, Celebrimbor | Telperinquar/Sauron | Mairon, Implied Melkor/Sauron
Series: The One That Needed It Most [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1646590
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	Estelio Han, Estelio Veleth

Ú i vethed nâ i onnad.

(It is not the end, it is the beginning.)

Si boe ú-dhanna.

(You mustn’t falter now.)

Ae ú-esteli, esteliach nad.

(If you don’t trust it, trust something.)

Estelio han, estelio han, estelio,

(Trust this, trust this, trust,)

Estelio han, estelio veleth.

(Trust this, trust love.)

Esteliach nad, estelio han.

(You trust something, trust this.)

***

It is a pale morning when Celebrimbor takes to the cobblestone path that curls itself down the hill and into the shallow valley. The snows had melted into muddy puddles and the grass was yellowed where the bare trees did not shield the tufts from the bitter wind that had blown from the narrow passes of the mountains. But there was the scent of pine suspended in the dew on each of the needles, and the quiet of the forest was not desolate so much as hushed, so much as the muted moments before wakefulness. It was Coirë, the _stirring,_ and the season brought with it dreams of the coming spring.

The path led down through the skeleton-brush and the matted leaves of last autumn, to a small stream that trickled a lazy course through the valley of the rolling hills that spread from the feet of the proud Hithaeglir. A coolness swirled about his step and the sun slanted its half-frozen rays across his shoulders. Celebrimbor could see the light dash itself to crystal on all the wet stones, could see the shimmer of the water like blue glass, and the fall of it on the bare skin of Annatar’s back where he sat still on a stone that rose from the water.

The scrape of his boots stop at the shore where he can see the thin and wan mosses, the cloth of Annatar’s robe falling to his elbows and the freckles caught like golden stars on the dusk of his skin. He is positioned just so that he cannot make out the story written there on the Maia’s face and only the curtain of his hair over uncharacteristically drooping shoulders. The fine mist seemed to fall heavy upon him, and his mud-caked feet remained hovering above the stream that ran clear and slightly-grown from the melting snow. He did not know when in the night he had left their bed, but as Celebrimbor approached, slipping his own feet from his boots to join him on the sitting-stone, the Maia’s face betrayed the hours of thoughts that had passed his vision by like water.

Annatar’s voice is small and soft when he speaks.

“I feel so transparent, Tyelpë,” he whispers. He does not look up from where he stares off into the water below. “The dawn passes right through me. I could fall through the world without catching on any matter.”

The sound of water over the rocky bed ran white through the silence. A branch dropped its fragrant dew into the water. Annatar does not make a sound— not a breath— and Tyelpë could imagine the moss growing across Annatar’s lap like it had grown over the stone, such was the distinction.

“You feel like you are losing control.”

Annatar huffed, nothing more than a faint exhale.

“Am I not?”

_‘You are vulnerable,’_ Tyelpë thought, but instead he said:

“You trust me,” and he took Annatar’s hand in his own, ashen with the cold and heavy with numbness.

Annatar looks at him for the first time that morning, looks down at their contact and the warmth of Tyelpë’s pink-tipped fingers with his own. The light of the sun does not make it through the thick fall of his hair but the molten gold that ever stirs in the irises of the Maia sends its brilliance upon his cheeks. There are no dark shadows under those sleepless eyes, but Tyelpë can see that he is exhausted all the same.

“I am trying.”

Tyelpë nods his head gently, rubs his thumb across the loosely curled fingers that he cradles. He lets his own bared feet fall from flat against the rock to dipping below the icy surface— and Annatar shudders when he does, as if through their hands the sparks of a shocking cold rise up through Tyelpë’s nerves and crackle into his own.

“Of all your gifts to me, Annatar, your trust is the most precious. When you trust me, I know you are giving me control.”

The gaze of the core of the earth, of the surface of the sun, of the light before Aman: it turns away. His hand does not move but the space where their skin meets surges with hot-cold-hot-cold, and Annatar remains hovering, mouth poised for a sentence he lets out in a single breath:

“I feel as though I am on the eve of a terrible battle, waiting for a move to be made.”

Tyelpë’s toes are numb with the frigid water. The thin robe tied about Annatar’s waist clings to him with the dew he’d weathered through the night-turned-morning.

“But it never comes.”

Annatar smiles bitterly, an uneven thing— unlovely on someone so radiant.

“The forces I once commanded… they are broken and disordered in the waiting.” And he looks at Tyelpë now, meets his eyes with the depth of eternal flame: “Then, you step forward onto the battleground…”

“And you find that you were only facing your own shadow?” Tyelpë asks.

Annatar nods. The sun drapes itself across their shoulders and the soft hairs along his arms raise as the Maia’s fingers squeeze his own gently back.

“You know that you have soothed the wars that tore my heart also, Anna. You know that you have my trust as well.”

His eyes are wide, halos of gold behind the silhouette of his pupils that sink deep into the grey of Celebrimbor’s. The Maia’s muddy feet finally fall into the stream, completing the circuit of their nerves. Something in Annatar surfaces even as he drowns, and the grief he carries wades free to the shore: time falls from his skin like running droplets, and he trembles.

“You could destroy me utterly, Tyelpë,” he wavers through the connection of their bright Fëar. “And I am scared that I will let you, and I am scared that I will try to destroy you first.”

Celebrimbor considers the way the dried mud on Annatar’s bare feet dampen and then wash away under the current. He considers their shadows across the glistening foam of the water, considers the grip that tightens even as his own tightens back.

“Both choices end in destruction,” he finally answers. “In destroying me… you would still destroy a part of yourself.”

The dew is fading with the sun that sails through the pallid sky, the light tumbling over the rocks and from the peaks of the mountains. He imagines that the Hithaeglir were giant prisms, that the spectra of light is split behind them and that they, sitting there on the stone with their feet in the water, collected the colour back into a faultless white that melted around them. _‘I feel so transparent, Tyelpë,’_ echoes up from the valley and into the air.

“I had the trust of the Mightiest on Arda once,” Annatar began again. “I failed to make Him see His own shadow, and it destroyed Him.”

Tyelpë focused the grey of his eyes into a silver filigree of emotion he couldn’t put name to, let Annatar see it there as bare as his own skin to the last bite of winter. Annatar continued as if he could not stop himself from letting his words spill from his lips.

“I do not want to become… inert glass. Or blind to it. I do not want my light to become the last sigil of ages past. I tire of being filled to the brim with naught but bitter memories and shapes of a never-ending war.”

“The trust that you have given me, Anna— I have seen your love for the world burning vibrant within you. This stillness will not be your fate.”

The Maia cuts up at him with his sharp eyes:

“You would not still me?”

“No!”

Tyelpë lets out a humorless laugh, and it echoes between them: “No, I could not! But you spend so much time among the shadows of your army that you do not realize the war need not begin at all.”

Annatar turns away again just as sharply. His breath can be heard now from over the points of his teeth. Across their connection he speaks again, tumultuous:

“I am frightened, Tyelpë. I feel as if I cannot touch, like I am drifting steadily away with the current.”

His hand trembles, the water trickles by and the day rises. Celebrimbor’s hand still holds the other’s, and their language goes beyond the press of fingers into a palm.

“It is not the end, it is the beginning: you mustn’t falter now.”

They look at each other— an impasse that did not exist in the gulf between them.

“If you do not trust it, trust something. Trust this: trust love.”

There were no more shadows collected under the light of Annatar’s eyes, but the feeling remained all the same: an uncertain future, a haunted past. But for now, there was only _this:_

“I am trying.”

**Author's Note:**

> The title and poem from the beginning are lyrics to "Evenstar" from the LotR OST.  
> <3  
> ***


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